Löwenhardt Foundation

Stories and pictures on the histories of four families

Almelo

House arrest

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4-5 April 1945 <-> 4-5 April 2020

Seventy-five years since the liberation of my home town Almelo (The Netherlands) I write about the hiding of my parents and many other Jews in the town. For more than two and a half years they had to hide until Canadian troops came to liberate them. 

At the moment when I am writing this, almost all European citizens are under house arrest in a more or less strict sense. In this unexpected pandemic, unheard of in modern times, the virus forces us to stay at home. With our partner and children or alone, we are locked up. [Read more…] about House arrest

Isaac de Leeuw, for kosher meat

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NIW 6 mei 1904
NIW 6 May 1904

Surprising ads in Holland’s oldest weekly, the NIW (New Jewish Weekly, founded in 1865 and still going strong today). They tell me that from 1904 or earlier my great-grandfather Isaac de Leeuw Az. 1 was kosher butcher in the Holtjesstraat in my hometown Almelo. In the ad he proclaims to be the one and only butcher in town working under rabbinical supervision, thus trying to enlarge his clientele. [Read more…] about Isaac de Leeuw, for kosher meat

Noten / Footnotes
  1. Az., Abrahamszoon, son of Abraham; on his matseewa the abbreviation is Azn.[↩]

The fatal exchange

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T’was some sixty years ago, or thereabouts. I am eight, ten years, twelve perhaps. In the nightstand in my parents’ bedroom I find a mysterious document. It is a stack of carbon copies of typed sheets. ‘General Police, Gelderland Province. Political Branch’ is printed in the left upper corner.  [Read more…] about The fatal exchange